Virtual Cards for Agility

Introduction

This game was created using Google Sheets and is based on the popular game Cards Against Humanity. They were designed to develop awareness and poke fun at Agile practices, as the questions and answers can be rather irreverent.

Playing the game with an Agile team provides an enjoyable, low consequence environment to try out new ideas and explore new modes of interaction. If you’ve ever played Cards Against Humanity or Apples to Apples, you will love Cards for Agility and Cards Against Agility (See post here.)

This game provides a great way to get Agile teams to interact and learn through game play. Either game can also be used as a tool to generate a fun and interactive retrospective.

Timing:

Game takes from 30-60 min to run depending on the number of rounds played.

Materials:

This game is designed for multiple players to participate simultaneously from their own computer. Prior to starting the game, all team members and the facilitator log into the video collaboration tool of choice (Skype, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, Zoom, etc.) and join the meeting invitation sent by the facilitator so everyone can hear, and where available, see each other.

Note: The landing page of the above link is “View Only”. Save a copy of the game to your Google Drive account by selecting “File” in the menu bar, then select “Make Copy” in the File drop-down.

Facilitator will need a “Google” email address or account to be able to do this. If you do not have an account, see new account creation with Google here.

Once a copy of the game has been saved, the facilitator then adds the names of the team members and clicks the Add Player button next to each player’s name. Doing so generates a new tab for each player to use to participate in the game.

Facilitator will then select the tab for each player and forward the URL for that player to each team member. This will allow them to enter their own answers to the game.

The
facilitator next clicks the Draw a Black
Card button to present the players with a scenario that is selected
randomly from a databank of scenarios.

At this point, each player navigates to their respective tab via a URL provided by the facilitator above. They will see a screen as shown below, then click on the Get All Cards button to load a set of 10 potential responses to the scenario, drawn randomly from a data-bank of responses. Each player selects a response by clicking one of the Play this Card buttons. If a player doesn’t like any of the potential responses, the Get All Cards button can be clicked to generate a new random set of 10 responses.

The facilitator displays the main playing tab to the team, shown again below, in the video collaboration tool. As players select responses, they appear in the grid to the right of the scenario. When all the players have selected a response, the facilitator chooses the winning response, which may be the best answer or the most irreverent one, per the facilitator’s choice. Player’s winning responses are kept track of by incrementing the number in the Cards Claimed column next to the player’s name. Game play continues for as many rounds as the team chooses to play.

A variation of the game consists of having the team members rotate into the facilitator role.

Learning Points:

This game is designed to bring your newer Agile team together using a positive fun way of learning about Agile terms and ideas.

By asking the team members “WHY” they chose a given answer it will provide you as the facilitator insight into the teams understanding of the Agile processes and how it all ties together. It is this positive focus that separates the “Cards For Agility” and the “Cards Against Agility” game. While similar in nature the latter is intended for more mature teams that are looking for a break from the routine.

I have a MS Excel version of the game that I can share with you. It’s works similar to the google docs version but it’s not quite as polished. Key difference is that you need to have the players send you the answers via chat and you don’t have everyone in the game at the same time.